Quick Updates During Holiday Week! December 14th

Hello Everyone,

We are coming soon to the end of our STRUCTURES related unit, but we are not quite done. A few more tasks to do!

Socials/Applied Math Maps: Due to absences, snow, etc., Ms. D is giving more time on making the map of our imaginary cities. They will be due on Friday! Then, after the break, students will have time to work with their partners on the brochure portion.

Design a Product: As a final fun project for this unit, each student will create a simple prototype of a product designed to solve a specific problem or need at school or at home. Students can be thinking of their “problem” over the break, and then we will be doing the prototypes during our first week back.

Secret Santa/White Elephant: Please remember to wrap both presents and bring them in. If anyone has trouble finding a White Elephant gift, then they should come and talk privately to Ms. D before Friday and I will help. Thank you!

Class Party: Class party on Friday. Please wear pajamas! Prizes for the best ones, as well as house points for the school. We will be going to the Pancake Breakfast in the morning! Don’t forget to bring your treats if you signed up to bring something.

Report Cards: Report cards go home today. I have individually conferenced with each student, so they should all be able to explain their report cards to their parents.

Next Unit!: Will be a bit of a surprise. We will start it the week AFTER we come back. We have some big plans and it should be fun!

Upcoming Field Trip: A long way in advance, but please mark the date. On April 18th, which is the day we come back from Easter Break, we will be going on a special field trip to the Lower Seymour Conservation Area to see our water reservoir. This field trip is special because we will be going to a place not usually open to the public, and the trip is partially funded by Greater Vancouver Regional District programs. We will be taking a bus to the reservoir area, then hiking outside to get a better view.

Happy Holidays!

Ms. D

Acts of Kindness Update!

Hello Everyone,

Well, it is Day 8, and we discussed two Acts of Kindness today that our class will be involved in over the next week. First, we are making posters tonight for the Food Bank Drive at school. Second, Ms. D contacted the BCSPCA in Burnaby to ask them if they need anything to support the animal population and their work there. Ms. D will put a basket in the classroom, and you can donate anything you would like me to take there after next week. Items to donate, according to the BCSPCA are:

  • Blankets
  • Canned Food
  • Toys

The blankets can be small, older blankets (for example, older swaddling blankets for babies) or other blankets you are done with. Canned food and toys can be any variety for dogs, cats, and smaller animals such as rabbits and rodents (hamsters, rats, gerbils, etc.)

You are not required to donate in any way. Our class has enjoyed having the gerbils as class pets, so I suggested if anyone is able that we make donations to animals, in the same way we are making donations to humans through the food bank, given the connection Division 5 students have with our furry friends. Thank you in advance for any donations you make!

Also, please watch the news reports about the snow. Check the news before heading in tomorrow morning! And, as always, be safe. If anyone is unable to make it because of snow tomorrow, please know we can always make up the work next week!

Have a good evening!

Ms. D

Holiday Countdown: Seven days to go?

Hello Everyone!

Today we worked steadily on unit review, creating our cities, and working on our acts of kindness along with our buddies.

Unit Quiz: The unit quiz is an open-book set of four questions related to form=function and our discussions during the unit. Students can use their blue binders, but the quiz must be done at school. Everyone should review their blue binders at home and think about their responses, so they can use the time at school to answer the questions. 

Making a City: Due to snow, absences, and just wanting to make sure the projects are quality, Ms. D is giving everyone until Dec. 14th, Wednesday, to finish their maps and advertising information. All work is done at school, although you can think about it at home.

Independent Math: You can mark your math independently using our marking books, and then you should ask any questions you have. Afterwards, show your homework to me and we will decide if you are ready for the unit quiz. All first unit quizzes are printed and ready to take for those who have marked their homework and have shown the work to the teacher. Remember, applied math is the major part of our work together as a class, and we are currently using measurement, coordinates, grids, and scale for our mapping project. Next, we will be applying math to forensics situations and problem solving of mysteries after the break!

French: Beginner French students are working in the textbook Complete French Smarts for a bit. Grade fives may note the review of vocab from last year. We will go over vocab together and there will be quizzes on the lesson sections. French Immersion students are researching holiday vocabulary or a song and must construct a lesson and activity for the whole class to do. Songs must be short and vocab must be taught. If doing just vocab, then an activity such as a worksheet, word find, or puzzle can be done to go along with it. Or something else creative! French Immersion students should also look at and complete the handouts from the Complete French Smarts for review, as well.

Holiday Prep: We sent home the glitter jars today! Enjoy! And we helped our buddies in Div. 9 make a secret art project. We have been making many mini art projects for both our tree and gifts! Don’t forget to work on your Secret Santa and White Elephant gifts. Thank you for participating in our Acts of Kindness! We will be helping Div. 1 with the food bank drive by making posters and helping box goods next week.

Hour of Code: We have been doing coding activities on code.org as part of the Hour of Code worldwide. Feel free to continue these activities at home! Thank you to Peter’s Dad who came in today to talk about coding and computers with us!

Have a great night!

Ms. D

 

 

Make a City! Our Socials and Math Project Related to Structure

We have spent time this unit talking about the structure required to set up a city, as related to FORM=FUNCTION!

  • We took some time to identify key features of maps, as we looked at different types of maps from around the world (key vocabulary: grids, compasses, longitude/latitude, key/legend, scale, city maps, and topographical maps.)
  • We talked about services needed if you were to set up a city. We looked at Burnaby’s City Services, and we made a chart of services provided at a municipal, provincial, and federal level.
  • We also imagined what the first cities would have been like. Where are cities located? We determined they are close to resources that give us our basic needs and economy.
  • How do cities change as the population grows? We drew some diagrams about the imaginary Joe Land that grew over time, and then talked about how structure changed and increased as more people moved in!

Now, we are working with a partner to create our own city, which we will advertise with the hope that people will want to come and live there!

Steps to Create the CITY:

  • Decide on a city name and the country it is in. Make sure the name isn’t taken. Think about how the name will be appealing to the people that might live there.
  • Your city must be on a coastal area that has water access of some sort. You must design the other topographical/land features for the area.
  • Think about what kind of city this is. What is its main economy? How does it make money? How will that impact the design of the city?
  • How does this city get its needs met and how does this impact its design? Think about its location in relation to resources. How do the natural surroundings meet the needs of its economy?
  • What is the population like and how does that affect the design of the city? How many people can live here? What services will there be? What kinds of things do the people who work here want to do?
  • Make a draft copy of your city. Use a piece of 8.5×14 paper to make a draft design. It does not need to be to scale. This is just to get a basic idea of your plan.
  • Use the Seattle map I provided on the board or another similar-sized map for help with scale. You need to provide a scale for your map, as well as a legend/key, grid marks, and other features. The Seattle map we went over is a great guide, as it is the same size as the large piece of graph paper for your final map.
  • Once you have a scale, start sketching out where things will go on the large piece of graph paper. You need to first label the grid. You don’t have to draw grid lines, because they are already on the paper, but you have to label the lines. Then, get a ruler out. Start sketching out the city in pencil, but measure as you go. Are the buildings, roads, and features of your map realistic? You may want to think about the real sizes of things out there. Again, use the map as a guide.
  • Colour in the map after you are sure you have it set up correctly.
  • Create a brochure to advertise your city, which will talk about your economy, key features, and reasons to live there! (We will talk about this separately next week.)

Criteria for Your Map:

  • Well thought out. You have answers to the questions I have asked above. You have shown you are a THINKER about your plan, and that you are KNOWLEDGEABLE using information from our unit.
  • Final map is attractive, neat, and well planned.
  • Grid lines have been labeled appropriately.
  • A key/legend, compass, and other map features as seen on maps provided in class have been provided.
  • A scale has been provided on the map, and it was used to decide how big things are and where they are placed. The map features should look appropriate sizes and appropriate locations from one another.
  • The map shows the structure of the city. In other words, people would be able to get their needs met and get around through the city, too. City services, resources, economy, and basic needs have been considered.
  • Location of natural features should be realistic and appropriate for the type of city you are designing. They should also be appropriate sizes using your scale.

Good luck creating your city! Rubric to follow in class on Monday. City maps are due Friday, Dec. 9th

Holiday Preparations and a Different Kind of Countdown

Hello Everyone,

During our first unit of the year, we spent time talking about “taking action.” We discussed the ACTION CYCLE, which involves: 1. Identifying a problem, 2. Taking action by coming up with a solution, and 3, Reflecting on whether or not the solution was effective.

As we have fun in our classroom making some great art for our tree, planning our holiday party, preparing for Secret Santa, and producing gifts during art time, I think it is also a time to reflect on TAKING ACTION. By action, I don’t mean the big ways, like the things large organizations are doing to help human rights. I mean the small ways — the things we can do every day to make the world a better place.

To that end, I am asking students to do an activity each day related to taking action in small ways. Day one, we told jokes. That might not seem like taking action, but laughter is a release of stress, and making people laugh is one of the ways we build community in a positive way. Thank you to everyone for your funny jokes today, and for practicing your public speaking skills!

For day two, I am asking us to say thank you and to send out positive messages. We started by putting holiday pictures and positive messages all over the blank sidewalk outside of our portable at lunch today. You know what I noticed? The messages were made for others, but I think the people making the positive messages were getting just as much out of it by laughing and doing something constructive together. Tonight, I have asked you to thank other teachers in our school by making thank you notes. We will put them in cards tomorrow for their teacher boxes!

Look for the next task to come end of tomorrow! While we wait, can you tell me about any positive traditions or actions you take for the holidays, or at any other time of the year? What kinds of things do you and your family do for others that we may not know about? What do you do for one another? How do you make the people in your family feel good every day, not just the holidays? What special things have you done for friends? I will start with a few comments below. Please add. Parents, feel free to join in so students see what kinds of positive, small actions can make a difference in our world.

Thank you,

Ms. D

Three Weeks Until Break?? Wow, Time Has Flown! November 28th

Hello Everyone!

Fourteen more days until holiday break! Wow, the time has truly flown!

  • Tonight, please look for bottle caps for our projects. I look forward to our many art and building mini projects that will fill our classroom tree!
  • Please finish your structures research. Your Power Point presentation is due end of day Friday. Power Points should be done in class only.
  • We will continue French Dialogues tomorrow. 
  • Thank you for your work on chemistry science stations related to solutions, density, and states of matter today!
  • The unit is ending before the break, so our quiz will be at the end of next week.
  • Ms. D has been busy preparing marks for first-term report cards, which will be given out Dec. 14th.

As we come up to report cards, there are some things we should remember:

It is important all marked work has been shown to Mom and Dad, so there are no surprises when the report card comes! Thank you to parents for signing the work and going over it at home. Make sure all work returns to your portfolio binder.

Remember marked work is summative. I don’t give out marks on every piece of work, because the marks come from end-of-unit work, when the student is showing what they know after the learning is over. The remainder of our work is formative, meaning it is about checking in with the student during the units. These daily assignments are also important, but they are marked with checks, as they are more about completion and receiving feedback than getting everything “right.” 

Report card marks come from more than one place. The marks in each subject are the result of marked work, completion and submission of daily assignments, the student’s participation in learning activities that don’t have a “markable” worksheet to go with them, as well as use of the learner profile (being a good communicator, risk-taker, principled, etc.). When thinking about marks, please go back to the Overall Participation Rubric 2016. 

Try to focus less on marks and more on growth! Some students get very nervous about marks. It is one of the reasons I try to have less, daily emphasis on them. We also have some perfectionists in our group who, even though they do well, focus only on the one question they missed, rather than celebrating what they do know. Please try to have conversations around reports that involve reading the comments as opposed to looking at the letter marks, because I think that is more helpful. Look for ways to grow, such as making sure work is organized, adding more detail to assignments, reading criteria, and ensuring everything gets turned in. Instead of saying, “I’m no good at that,” try to say, “I have room to grow in that area, and here is how I will try to grow.”

Letter Marks: Remember in grade three, you didn’t have letter marks, you had words. It can help to translate this way: exceeding expectations (A level), fully meeting (B level), meeting (C+ level) and not yet meeting (C/C-). Ask yourself, if you looked at your grade three report cards, would you have had straight A’s if you did this translation? A “C+” is still meeting expectations, and it is not a bad mark. When you see your marks, you may want to make goals to do better, and that is okay, but it is not okay to beat yourself up, because getting an “A” or a “B” is not meant to always be easy. Remember also that these marks are only for grade four and five — they are practice marks for the future!

We will talk about this in class again, and I hope these notes help for having some conversations at home, too. I will be talking to each student one-on-one about what will be coming on reports, so they feel more comfortable when the actual document goes home, too.

Have a great evening!

Ms. D

Unit Videos to Watch! November 23rd

Hello Everyone,

French dialogues are now due on Monday, but please work on them at home. Everyone was working well, and we needed more time to finish them. Be ready to go for Monday.

LIBRARY TOMORROW! Math Quiz, too!

Here are the videos we looked at today as part of science and social studies discussions around our unit:

City Services of Burnaby

History of Vancouver 

Nikon Universcale

For French Beginners — If you want a fun way to practice pronunciation and to remember basic phrases in French, here are the songs we were playing in class, along with some others you can watch and repeat to get a sense of the language:

Comment tu t’appelles Video for French Help

Bonjour Video Song for French Help

Au Revoir Song for French Help

French Greetings Song for Children

French Months

Thank you,

Ms. D

Update November 22nd, Tuesday

Hello Everyone,

I will keep this short, as I am working on report cards this week!

Soon I hope to post some great photos of our structure destruction which began today. We have a few more to go, as some groups still need some more time to build. I hope everyone found it fun to see how much weight their towers could hold!

Everyone is working well on their structure research, using a variety of resources. I helped many people today find additional websites and/or books in the classroom about their topics. If you need help, please ask. We are hoping that by Thursday, some people will have enough research to begin their Power Points.

French Dialogues are coming along, and we will present them on Thursday (change in day.) We went over the criteria for the dialogue together, and tomorrow I will give you a copy of the rubric. Thank you for your creativity today while working in these! Also, remember to avoid Google Translate.

Math Packet # 3 Quiz is Thursday. I am handing back #2 quiz tomorrow along with your packets. Let me know if you have questions as we prepare for the quiz.

Looking for X-Mas Ornament Ideas! If you have any fun, easy ideas of things we can make, let Ms. D know. Also, I am looking for bottle caps and corks. If you have any at home, please bring them in!

Thank you again to the parents who helped us with the Science World field trip!

Have a great night! Stay dry!

Ms. D

Reminders for Thursday, November 17th – Field Trip Tomorrow!

Hi Everyone!

Reminders for tonight:

  • Field Trip Tomorrow: You might want to read some of the nano articles found under the articles of interest under Structures, such as the Nanooze Magazine from Cornell University. Please do not bring valuables. Bring a lunch, water, and a snack. Bring a light jacket and very little else! No, sorry, there won’t be time to get White Spot, so please bring a lunch. We leave promptly at 9AM. Thank you to Michael’s Mom, Vaughn’s Mom, and Patricia’s Dad for accompanying us this time.
  • French for French Immersion Students: Continue to brainstorm your dialogue, in which you are pretending to arrive at a country that is not France for a two week vacation, and you meet a friend on the plane. You may need to do some research on your country and city so you have real things to talk about! Thank you for your great work today in partner groups. Due Wednesday for presentation. 
  • French for Beginners: Review Je French 3. Next Wednesday you will get a quick quiz with the nouns from that lesson listed, and you have to fill in the articles “a” or “the” — so you need to know the difference between the masculine (m) and the feminine (f) forms. You do not need to memorize the nouns. On Monday, you will get more time to work with your partner on your very brief dialogue that reviews what we have done so far. You can find additional words to say at BBC Primary Languages. Pronunciation is key, so practice phrases aloud.
  • Research: We will be getting class time for research, but you may want to look for book and internet resources on your own. The project description is found here. We will be working on this most of next week. If you want to use World Book Online at home, remember you just need the password. If you missed writing it down today, make sure you do that tomorrow.
  • Math Packet 2 Quiz Monday
  • Holiday Party: The student holiday party committee made a notice to send out to everyone today. Please return as soon as you can. When they are talking about donations, they mean only $2, which we talked about in class. Don’t donate if you are bringing something else to the party from the list. Thank you to the students for independently organizing this notice and the party, which is great leadership!

Thank you, everyone!

Researching STRUCTURE

We will be working on a mini research project about structure. Each of you has chosen a specific area to research, approved by Ms. D in class.

Step One:

Find out information about your topic related to FORM follows FUNCTION and the things we have been talking about in class. Use some of the research sites on the Articles of Interest page to get started.

Please record your resource. Use EasyBib if needed to help! 

You will need to use one encyclopaedia, 2 books, and at least 2 online sources.

Answer these questions, and make sure you record your notes to turn in!:

  • What is the form of your structure? (You will need specific details, a labeled diagram with all of the parts labeled.)
  • What is the purpose of your structure? 
  • Who is the structure for? Who does it benefit or who was it designed for?
  • How does it work? How is it built? How do the parts work together?
  • What works well with its design? What does not?
  • What would need to be changed to make the structure even better?
  • Is there anything else that is interesting about the topic you have chosen?
  • ONE QUESTION OF YOUR OWN: Make up a question and try to answer it.

Step Two:

Create a PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Prezi presentation with your research. You may not start on it until you show Ms. D your notes. If you have not done PowerPoint much before, then you should choose that one, as it is the easiest to work on.

Avoid putting too many colours. Choose a theme to work with so all slides look similar. Do not put too many words. Use visuals instead. Do not use pictures with any copyright symbols. Do not just use clip art. You will be presenting, so what you will say can be recorded on another sheet of paper as your script.

As you work on your presentation, make sure you save as you go. Name your file in this way without punctuation:

FIRST NAME     STRUCTURE Presentation    TOPIC    DATE (month, day, year – two digits)

For example:  Andrea Structure Presentation Skyscrapers 111516

Make a minimum of 10 slides, using this as your outline to share information from your notes. 

Slide 1:     Interesting Title of Presentation, Your Full Name, Date, Picture filling page
Slide 2:     Introduce the structure and where you would find it.
Slide 3:     Explain what the structure is for. Who uses it? What is its purpose?
Slide 4-6:  Explain how the structure works and how form follows function.
Slide 7:     Explain how the structure works well and how it does not work well.
Slide 8:     Explain how the structure could be improved or other design facts.
Slide 9:     Sum up all of your other slides, like a concluding sentence but in a slide!
Slide 10:   Thank your sources and list the Bibliography

Step Three:

Write a script for what you will say for each slide. Have a peer edit it. Then practice it so you can present it in front of the class. The whole presentation should not be more than 5 minutes long.

1 … 45 46 47 48 49 … 71